A daylong, nationwide effort to get people to turn in old or unwanted prescription drugs collected more than 121 tons of unused medicine.

Authorities said a woman in Jacksonville handed over drugs she's collected for the last 50 years while a man in Troy, Mo., hauled a kitchen drawer packed with medicine to a drop-off site.

With prescription drug abuse on the rise, the goal was to keep the drugs from falling into the hands of abusers and criminals.

The Drug Enforcement Administration organized the national prescription drug "Take-Back" day last Saturday. Officials offered people across the country a free, anonymous and legal way to get rid of potentially dangerous prescription drugs that have been cluttering medicine cabinets.

"The Take-Back Campaign was a stunning nationwide success that cleaned out more than 121 tons of pills from America's medicine cabinets, a crucial step toward reducing the epidemic of prescription drug abuse that is plaguing this nation," DEA Acting Administrator Michele M. Leonhart said in a statement Tuesday.